Unsanitary Napkins

The thing about periods is that they always give me something to write about, or at least once a month. So, yes, put down that jelly donut, because it’s time for a story from the nether regions.

So, I’m getting older, you know. Like, mid 40’s older. And after two kids and three decades of eliminating the monthly lining of my uterus, I seem to be, well, having a bit of a glitch in the matrix. If you are one of five who reads my blog regularly, this does not come as a surprise to you.  But for some unknown reason, possibly denial, I am constantly shocked by how fucking miserable my period can be.

Not miserable enough to get a hysterectomy.  A hysterectomy is not only the last resort, it is literally my last resort. I have exhausted all other traditional options available to me through western medicine.  I am not a huge believer in alternative methods, so for right now, it’s either surgery or irregularity. I go with irregularity. Take that, you people who think I am not spontaneous.

What’s more unplanned than an aging woman’s menstrual cycle? Right now, I am having a period a mere eight days after the last one ended. If I were any more spontaneous, I would combust.

This premenopausal bullshit is all relatively new to me. I come from a line of women who had their interior lady parts ripped out at an early age. I am pretty sure my mother and both grandmothers did not make it to their forties with their wombs and tubes. I don’t have anything in my family history to compare my experience, other than the fact that even after so many years, it still sucks.

I do remember my mom having her own issues with excessive bleeding. One time, when I was about eight or nine, I recall my mother coming home from work or shopping or wherever she used to go without my sisters and me. She came in all upset, and the entire backside of her really large mom jeans ass was just covered in menstrual blood, like she sat in a bucket of blood or her butt hole ruptured or something. It scared the hell out of me. I remember another time when she was on all fours on her bed, writhing around, as what must have been an ovarian cyst burst, leaving her with extreme pain and an inability to stay still. I recollect laughing at watching her bellow like a cow yet being afraid because she didn’t slap me for laughing, which meant it must have really hurt. By the time she was forty, all her lady innards were gone, and whatever menopausal shit she experienced was lost to me, since I was too young to really know what was going on. Mostly, I just thought she was a bitch. It never occurred to me she might have a good reason.

But enough about her. This is a story about my uterus, which I am convinced is trying to kill me. Here I am, having a period a week after the last one ended. You would think I would not have had the time to conjure up a healthy uterine lining, but the joke’s on you.  And here’s the thing: they don’t tell you about this part in your sex ed class in middle school. Back then at the start of all this womanhood crap, it’s all about how you aren’t going to lose your virginity to a tampon if you are truly pure and a good girl (well, maybe you won’t, but it’s best not to risk it). They don’t tell you that later on at the tail end of the baby making time frame, you think you are going to die from the blood loss, and also, seriously, Tampax, can you not make something more absorbent than a super plus? I regularly have to use the XXXL tampon along with a pad, because you just never know.

Yesterday was that day, the one where I feel like crap, where I need to check and recheck for potential feminine hygiene breaches. I changed my tampon before I ran to the grocery store, but I didn’t have time to investigate any potential leaks before heading over to the car pool line. And I forgot my back up pad in my rush to do the grocery shopping. I was living on the edge. It wasn’t until I parked my car in the school line when I got that feeling.

Ladies, you know that feeling. You sit there, or you stand up, or you sneeze or cough, and you think, oh shit, I’ve sprung a leak.

I got that feeling while in the car pool line. It wasn’t like I was just going to be there for ten minutes. I knew between picking up one child and the next and then the drive to dance lessons, I had no opportunity for a pit stop. I frantically dug through my purse, looking for a spare pad. Usually I carry one or two around for my daughters, and I thought I might luck out, but I found nothing but a handful of crumpled Target receipts, which don’t appear to be very absorbent.

I searched the back seat, hoping that at some point, a lonely pad might have fallen out of a pocket or handbag, but again, I was empty handed. Also, searching the back seat made the situation in my pants seem even more precarious.

Surely, I had a travel pack of Kleenex somewhere in my vehicle. I looked in the thing between the seats, but it only held CDs that I didn’t remember putting in there five years ago and a collection of dried up pens. Nothing under the seats. Nothing in my purse or the storage in the doors.  Then I checked the glove compartment.

My glove compartment holds the car manual, a couple of tire pressure gauges, an ice scraper, proof of insurance and registration please ma’am, and yes, a giant stack of fast food restaurant napkins. I think you know where this is going.

I grabbed a wad of those napkins, courtesy of Chick Fil A, Zaxby’s, and Bojangles, and I did what I had to do. Right there in the carpool line, I unzipped my jeans and shoved my hand down, positioning that heap of paper napkins between my legs and inside my underwear. It wasn’t a mound for a family of four, mind you. It was enough for the whole Duggar family, 19 kids and counting. Because desperate times call for desperate measures.

I am sparing you the aftermath details, because I care, and I want you to come back and read some more. Let’s just say that as far as judgment calls go, this was a good one. And also, I need to stock up on my feminine hygiene products for the car, much like I used to carry around a change of panties and clothes for my girls when we were potty training, only this time, the spare panties will be for me.